This Is How ILM Went and Made All Those Incredible Special Effects in The Avengers

To celebrate being nominated for an Oscar for its work on The Avengers, Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects wizards, have released a behind-the-digital-scenes look at how all the awesome visuals were made. Watch this and be utterly amazed.

It's common knowledge that basically everything in a modern film is CGI-ified, but hell, I didn't quite grasp the extent to which that's really true. Looking at this, the actors basically just performed in a tiny green box, with everything, including basic things like the roads and streets, added in after. How on Earth you can get a sense of purpose and actually act out a scene without any context like that, I have no idea. I guess it helps when you're paid oodles of money, but still, not even the bloody tarmac is real.

It's truly amazing to see what ILM's capable of, especially when you simply can't tell that a cityscape, or anything else like that, is CGI. One day it'll all be CGI, and we won't need puny Gods humans anymore. Will that be the death of cinema? Not if ILM can help it. [YouTube via TotalFilm]